Social Media Overload: Chains, Challenges, and Quizzes

In the last week there has been an overload of social media posts, trends, and memes. For some, this may be annoying, but it’s important to remember we are all locked up in our homes with not much to do besides schoolwork, and we aren’t supposed to be seeing each other face-to-face.

The first trends that started appearing were on people’s Instagram stories. Every story would consist of one of two options: the beautiful women chain, and the 10 push-ups chain. The beautiful women chain started to spread positivity amongst the COVID-19 chaos. A female would post a picture she felt confident in with a sentence or two on positivity and then would tag three other women to continue the chain. The 10 push-ups chain was started to get people active since the gyms are closed. Someone would do 10 push-ups, and tag three others to “see 10, do 10.”

Going off those trends came the “see a puppy, post a puppy” trend working the same way but with pictures of the user’s puppies, and “see a verse, post a verse” where users would post their favorite Bible verse for encouragement and tag three others. The “game face challenge” followed in their footsteps where athletes posted an action shot of them playing the game they love and tagging fellow athletes to do the same.

As these trends faded out, in came the templates of “tag someone who” and “my fave things.” The first template consisted of a few personality traits and the user tagged one of their followers who possessed that trait. This trend was a small reminder to those that make a difference in our lives that they are loved and appreciated. The “my fave things” template was to be filled out with gifs and was a great time-killer if you wanted to make it look really nice.

The internet breaking trend came more recently when all of a sudden Instagram was covered in throwback pictures and more “casual” pictures with the caption “until tomorrow.” When someone liked the picture, they received a message in their direct messages that they now had to post an embarrassing picture of themself with the caption “until tomorrow” and leave the post up for 24 hours. Though this trend was even more overwhelming than the Instagram stories, it was a nice comedic relief as we are all going through a stressful and chaotic time. These posts took the place of FaceTuned, photoshopped, and filtered pictures, and gave us an authentic glimpse into their everyday life, or let us see what the user looked like as a toddler. Despite how Instagram flooded with these posts for a day or two, it was a nice change that made us all smile.

Lastly, with the increase in free time has come an increase in boredom, so what better way to curb this boredom than to make a quiz for your friends to take about you? These quizzes popped up throughout SnapChat stories this week, and even though this is yet another trend, it’s kind of fun to see what you do and don’t know about your friends, and what your friends do and don’t know about you.

COVID-19 has transformed social media- for better or worse that’s up to you. While these trends may be annoying at first, remember we are all starting to get pretty bored and want something new to do. Social media is that outlet for many to be creative, express themselves, and connect with others. Just because you are tagged doesn’t mean you have to comply if that’s not your thing, but don’t judge others because they want to hop on the trend.